Mystery Monday: Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938)

The third entry in the Mr. Moto series, Mr. Moto's Gamble may well be the first ever movie crossover. Before Frankenstein met The Wolfman, before King Kong vs. Godzilla, and certainly decades before the Marvel crossovers, Mr. Moto met Charlie Chan. Sort of.

Mr. Moto's Gamble began life as Charlie Chan at the Ringside with Warner Oland as Chan and Keye Luke as Number One Son, Lee Chan. After a week of filming, Oland walked off the set due to a variety of reasons. Fox finally decided to cut their losses and rewrite the film as the 3rd Moto. But they kept Lee Chan in the script and the movie makes reference to Charlie on several occasions, even going so far as to have Lee refer to him as "Pop" as he always did. This would be the last time Luke played Lee until the last two Roland Winters movies.

The film starts inexplicably with Moto teaching a criminology class at an unnamed university. Among his students are Number One Son and a kleptomaniac who wants to become a detective (boxer Maxie Rosenbloom). Moto and Chan go to a boxing match that night with Lt. Riggs (Harold Huber). The match turns deadly when one of the boxers is murdered with a poisoned boxing glove. Moto naturally investigates, uncovering a gambling syndicate along the way and even more murders. He also gets an occasional assist from Lee and does an awful lot of quotes that sound very Charlie Chan-ish.

There is some amusement in spotting the supporting cast. Pierre Watkins and John Hamilton, both of whom played Perry White in Superman--Watkins in the serial, Hamilton on TV--both are in this, even though they don't share any scenes. Douglas Fowley, best remembered for Singin' in the Rain and Cat Women of the Moon, is one of the gamblers. Frequent John Wayne costar Ward Bond is one of the boxers, the champion Biff Moran. Lon Chaney, Jr. also pops up in a small role.

As a Chan film, this would be tops. As a Moto film, however, it's merely okay. Part of the problem is the fact that the two characters are so different. Moto is a spy, fairly ruthless, and very action oriented. Chan is a sleuth, the type who walks into the room, asks a few questions, and says "You are murderer". Having Mr. Moto as a pure sleuth type is like having Chan played as a karate fighting woman. Oh, wait. They were gonna do that a few years back with Lucy Liu.

It's not that it's an appreciably bad movie. None of the Moto movies are bad. But this is definitely the odd man out of the series, a slowish procedural that follows two great spy thrillers. Even the inclusion of a sort of fight late in the film doesn't entirely help. The film's saving grace is as a curiosity piece for the scenes between Moto and Lee.  It's mostly worth watching, but not really representative of the rest of the films. Fortunately, the next film would be a return to form for the series.